In my youth I was much thrilled with the stories of scouts.

I wanted to follow trails through the forest, seeing footprints invisible to untrained eyes.  I tried it, but revised my ambitions when I found that any mongrel pup could do it better than I could, and there was no demand for second rate scouts.  Next, I had day-dreams of being a great detective, reasoning from clues and taking apart mysteries that baffled shallow thinkers.

Then I had my great chance.  It was to settle for myself whether or not there was a God who would enter covenant relations with men.  I wasted no time on obviously discredited gods, but what a blundering investigator I proved to be: I overlooked outstanding evidences of God and took seriously negative testimony.  If chickens could talk, there are millions of old hens that would testify that there are no stars – they have never seen them.  There are millions of men who decide that there have been no miracles, because they have never seen them.  I reasoned that a real God ought to be the most evident being in the universe, and difficulty in finding Him argued against his existence.  Then I heard quoted the words of the great Teacher, “If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know ....”  In other words, if I really wanted to go God’s way, He would find me.

I did and He did.

Most people are looking for a God who will accept their way of life, or one who will be pleased with compliments and gestures in lieu of obedience.  Unless you are eager to love what He loves and hate what He hates, you might as well hunt for wild squirrels with a bass drum.  If you are determined to put God first in your life, the angels of God will “run interference” for you on your way to the goal.

God seems to have decreed that every  -ism that nullifies any portion of the Holy Scriptures, shall have one or more threads sticking out.  Pull it where it is loose and it will unravel.  Only truth will fit all the facts of nature and human experience; it will never contradict itself not sponsor a mathematical absurdity.  To young people, let me say, I am trying to do for you what I wish someone had done for me fifty years ago.  Know your Bible.  It will put you “wise” to most of the “cockeyed”  -isms of the day.  In the discussion that follows I offer some facts that may help you to do with man-made religions what I once did with a doll that was cracked in the head.  I took it apart to see the sawdust in it.